Chapter 2584 - Investigation (Part 11)
Guo Huiwen found himself at a loss for words. After all, weren't these the very systems Elder Zheng had created? The pharmaceutical factory had operated under the supervision of several Elders for years, with management measures that were nothing if not thorough. To say leakage from the factory was impossible would be an overstatement, but it would certainly be extraordinarily difficult.
"No system is ever airtight," Guo Huiwen pressed on. "In your view, if someone wanted to obtain drugs illicitly, which channel would be the easiest?"
Wang Liang hesitated. This question reeked of ill intent. Though it seemed like idle conversation, the man across from him was a secretary close to an Elder. Whichever distributor or channel he named, word would inevitably get out and make him enemies.
He chose his words with care: "If we're talking channels, any of them is possible. I really couldn't say which would be easier to exploit. After all, we don't know their methods, do we?"
Guo Huiwen blinked in surprise. You're my old classmate from Fangcaodi, he thought. I never expected you to become so slippery!
Recognizing that Wang Liang was now on guard and would reveal nothing new no matter how hard he pressed, Guo Huiwen let the matter drop. The factory was probably the least likely source anyway. Better to wait until the medicines were picked up, then trace the actual distribution.
Two days later, Guo Huiwen, Wang Liang, and a representative from Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital's pharmacy traveled together to the freight depot to receive the shipment. Guo Huiwen was acting as Zheng Mingjiang's representative. Since this batch of medicines had been requested in her name as "special use" and fell outside the factory's regular shipping plan, he carried her authorized pickup slip.
After all three parties verified the documentation, Guo Huiwen presented the slip and took possession of the goods. He and Wang Liang signed the handover documents, while the medicines themselves were transferred to the hospital pharmacy for storage.
Guo Huiwen and Wang Liang followed the pharmacy staff back to the stockroom. Just as the staff moved to open the boxes for inventory, Guo Huiwen stopped them. He turned to Wang Liang: "Let's verify now."
This was all part of the plan. Though this batch of special-use medicines bore no special markings, every box and bottle had its serial number meticulously recorded.
The medicines arrived in specialized standard packaging. They checked the seals first, confirmed they were intact, then opened the boxes. A random spot-check of several bottles and boxes against the manifest showed everything in order. They nodded their approval for the storage to proceed.
The pharmacy staff counted, registered, and shelved the medicines, then reported: quantity, type, and specifications all matched the shipping manifest exactly.
The conclusion was clear—no drugs had leaked during transport. The leakage had to be happening at the end-user level.
That left an enormous scope to investigate. After much deliberation, Guo Huiwen decided to report the current situation to Zheng Mingjiang and await further instructions.
In Sanshui, Zheng Mingjiang read his report with a heavy heart.
She had raised this matter; the Senate had given its support. Yet day after day passed, and the timeline on either side of her carefully prepared PowerPoint remained blank—nothing to record. She could only console herself that the investigation was progressing steadily, if slowly.
Neither the investigation team dispatched to Huizhou nor Guo Huiwen receiving goods in Guangzhou had provided any useful leads.
The only progress, such as it was, came from confirming that the bait medicines had successfully entered Provincial-Hong Kong General Hospital's pharmacy. This disproved her first hypothesis: theft or substitution during the sea voyage. The next step was to determine whether someone could extract medicines from the pharmacy itself.
One thing she could now say with reasonable certainty: the counterfeiters probably weren't obtaining drugs through the self-pay medical channel. True, anyone who could afford the consultation and medication fees, had a qualifying condition, and possessed a doctor's prescription could openly purchase antibiotic medications from any hospital or private pharmacy. But these drugs were extremely expensive, leaving too thin a profit margin for counterfeit dealers. Unless they transported them far afield—to Jiangnan, the capital, or elsewhere—this approach simply wasn't lucrative enough. And medicines traded over such long distances demanded authenticity above all else; packaging and everything had to be completely intact. That was an entirely different operation from the current disguised products.
To extract excess profits, the key lay in obtaining "publicly-funded channel" medicines. Under the current dual-track system, publicly-funded medicine prices ran anywhere from one-tenth to one-fiftieth of "commercial channel" prices. That profit differential alone was worth killing for.
As the saying went: people will risk beheading for profitable business, but no one does business at a loss. The commercial channel didn't need watching. The crux of the matter was the publicly-funded channel.
Her options now were limited. One approach was to closely monitor the newly arrived antibiotics—Wu Mu had already planted several people inside the hospital to keep constant watch over the pharmacy's drug flows. The moment any serial-numbered drugs moved, tracking would begin immediately.
The other was to place her hopes in the Huizhou operation. Lu Cheng was an experienced political security worker, but she had made no progress since arriving.
Though people spoke of the Senate as omnipotent, that reputation came with a crucial premise: the new world the Senate had built possessed powerful forces that no other powers in this timeline could match. Relying on this generational gap, an ordinary naturalized citizen cadre could appear omnipotent in natives' eyes. But operating independently outside the Senate's sphere, one quickly learned what the old saying meant: "A scholar is useless in a hundred ways." The complex reality of Ming society would make that lesson painfully clear.
Zheng Mingjiang now felt she wasn't much better off than going solo. Huizhou wasn't the Senate's deeply-cultivated sphere of influence. Many of the methods, tools, informants, and systems that political security, police, and even tax personnel relied on for investigations simply didn't exist here. As for their adversaries, they knew nothing at all. The deep gulf between the Senate and the Ming dynasty only magnified the investigation's difficulty.
It was like that famous joke from the old timeline—America trained a Black spy to infiltrate Russia, only for him to be exposed the moment he stepped off the plane. Beyond this predicament of the enemy lurking in shadows while they stood exposed, the Senate itself was probably leaking information. The mastermind behind the scenes might not fully grasp the Senate's movements, but they certainly had ways of gathering intelligence. If large quantities of antibiotics could be trafficked right under their noses, what were a few whispered words?
After this was over, she'd just go back to being an academic authority. Zheng Mingjiang grumbled to herself, then opened an urgent telegram from Zheng Xiaoyu.
Her worried frown transformed into delight as she read. Someone at Zheng Xiaoyu's location had actually delivered themselves to the door.
Zheng Xiaoyu currently oversaw all pharmaceutical, health, and epidemic prevention work throughout Huizhou Prefecture, including the health clinics in each county. Naturally, he also controlled the drug distribution channels.
His telegram reported that a local pharmacy owner had contacted him under the pretense of wanting to "open a new-style clinic." Such an undertaking involved issues of physician qualification certification and controlled drug prescription rights—both with extremely high thresholds. According to Health Ministry regulations, a physician needed at least one year of general practitioner training at the Lingao or Guangzhou medical vocational school to obtain a practice license and prescription rights. Even then, these rights were quite limited—many controlled drugs couldn't be prescribed, and the clinic itself couldn't stock drugs. Patients had to take their prescriptions to pharmacies with controlled drug sales permits.
In all of Huizhou, only one pharmacy held such a permit: the Runshi Tang Huizhou branch, located in the prefectural city.
So this owner's purpose, besides discussing the clinic, was clearly to obtain a controlled drug sales permit. He had hinted to Zheng Xiaoyu that he could offer "dry shares" to him and relevant personnel. To demonstrate his sincerity, he had already gifted him fifty yuan.
"Fifty yuan—such generosity!" Zheng Mingjiang thought. This owner had truly invested heavily.
Zheng Xiaoyu's idea was to use this encounter to cultivate an image of himself as "greedy for money." That way, even if this particular owner had no connection to the counterfeit drug syndicate, word would spread that he was someone who "could be bought." The syndicate would likely approach him of their own accord, allowing him to infiltrate their operation from within.
This was indeed a promising opportunity, Zheng Mingjiang reflected. Once rumors of Zheng Xiaoyu's "corruption" circulated, the interconnected world of drug merchants and dealers would surely take notice. It might well attract members of the counterfeit syndicate.
Her role now was to stir up a wave of "pharmaceutical ledger audits" in Guangzhou—the bigger the fanfare, the better. That would force their supply channels to become more cautious and reduce activity. The counterfeit syndicate would then urgently seek new suppliers...
Zheng Mingjiang annotated the telegram's margin: "Approved. Be careful."
After the investigation team relocated to Boluo, they immediately launched operations at the medicine market, deploying multiple surveillance points. They conducted round-the-clock monitoring of all pharmacies, stalls, and individuals claiming to sell Australian miracle drugs, trying to trace the upstream suppliers.
Their original great hope—Wanchun Quan, the source of Lushi Powder—yielded disappointing results after covert investigation. Wanchun Quan had been selling Lushi Powder for decades; it was the shop's "ancestral secret recipe." In other words, this Lushi Powder wasn't some suddenly-appearing fake medicine but a traditional Chinese patent medicine that had existed for many years. Investigation team members purchased batches of Lushi Powder for analysis, which proved the medicine was ordinary Chinese patent medicine containing no compound ingredients whatsoever.
Lu Cheng convened a meeting to analyze the situation. The team concluded that the counterfeiters were likely stealing Lushi Powder's name. Their method was probably to buy large quantities of the original medicine from Wanchun Quan, mix it with sulfonamide and other antibiotic powders, then resell it—using the legitimate product as cover.
Lu Cheng's decision was clear: strengthen surveillance of Wanchun Quan, focusing especially on tracking where large Lushi Powder transactions went. Since the counterfeiters needed to mass-produce fake medicines, their purchase quantities couldn't be small. Following large shipments of Lushi Powder would lead them straight to the counterfeiting workshop.
"Wonder if Old Yuan has arrived yet," someone mused.
Yuan Shuzhi had departed several days before the investigation team. By all accounts, he should have reached Boluo by now. Though Lu Cheng harbored some disdain for the wily old investigator, his undercover work might actually turn up something useful.
(End of Chapter)